| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: That old gentleman's neck is in some kind of a noose, thought I
to myself, and his difficulty is to prevent the rope from being
drawn tight. Meanwhile this poor girl's happiness and future are
at stake.
"Allan," said Anscombe to me a little later, for by now he called
me by my Christian name, "I suppose you haven't heard anything
about those oxen, have you?"
"No, I could scarcely expect to yet, but why do you ask?"
He smiled in his droll fashion and replied, "Because, interesting
as this household is in sundry ways, I think it is about time
that we, or at any rate that I, got out of it."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: "Oh, friend!" she said, giving to the exclamation the grace of an
involuntary avowal, "when a woman attaches herself for life, think you
she calculates? It is not question of refusal (how could I refuse you
anything?), but the idea of what you may think of me if I speak. I
would willingly confide to you the strange position in which I am at
my age; but what would you think of a woman who could reveal the
secret wounds of her married life? Turenne kept his word to robbers;
do I not owe to my torturers the honor of a Turenne?"
"Have you passed your word to say nothing?"
"Monsieur de Cadignan did not think it necessary to bind me to
secrecy-- You are asking more than my soul! Tyrant! you want me to
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